In Mackay, you either know Ben Barba, or you know somebody who does. Somebody who is more than willing to tell you a freakish story about something the boy wonder did when he played on the football fields back home.

The word popular doesn't suffice. We're talking about a player who was the sole reason that sales of Canterbury jerseys at a Mackay sports store increased by 3500 per cent in one year. Talk about becoming an overnight hero.

Such is Barba's appeal that hair salons in central Queensland are styling more comb-overs for children than they are for pensioners.

All of which must seem like fun at times. But, on the flip side, getting used to that sort of pressure would take some time. Maybe sometimes it would get to you.

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Barba can thank his meteoric rise up the rugby league ranks for his home-town popularity. He can also blame the very same thing for his indefinite suspension at the Bulldogs. With success comes expectation. With expectation comes responsibility.

That responsibility can sometimes prove too much, especially if you've had the upbringing the Canterbury No.1 has had. He's from a humble family, who relied on generous contributions from their local football club to keep the five Barba brothers in rugby league.

His ''doing it for myself'' attitude often got him into trouble on the football field. So, too, did his temper.

But if you had not been to Mackay and heard the stories about the man who has captured the imagination of the rugby league world, you wouldn't have expected Barba to be anything other than the devastating player with the beaming smile who we saw on our TV screens throughout last year.

Maybe through this ordeal, Barba will learn that it takes more than skill to be a genuine superstar.

His older brother, Aaron, considered by many in Mackay as the most gifted player of the Barba bunch, learnt the hard way. He never made the big time because of off-field dramas. Now his younger brother has been suspended, also because of issues away from the paddock.

In 2011, Barba made more errors than most fullbacks. He didn't take long to fix up his game and more than made up for prior mistakes, with one of the best individual seasons in league history. Hopefully, his ability to learn from his mistakes will also apply to his life off the field.